e, I assure you, until I met with the
accidents that altered my shape to what you now see it. Well, I repeat,
that I grew a fine promising child, and, to the inexpressible amazement
and delight of my parents, showed symptoms of taking unusually early to
my legs.

Nor were these symptoms unfaithful. I took to my pins, on my own
account, before I was ten months old; but, unfortunately, my first walk
was into a draw-well, where I would infallibly have been drowned, if it
had not been for a large Newfoundland dog which my father kept, and
which was close by me at the time of the accident. The faithful creature
leapt in after me, and kept me afloat, until my father came and
extricated me. After this, I was never trusted a moment out of sight;
and thus, instead of this precocious developement of my physical powers
proving a blessing to me, it proved a curse; for it deprived me of all
liberty. As I grew up, however, this restraint became less rigorous, and
I was permitted to ramble in the garden; and one of my first feats,
after obtaining this freedom, was, to climb a high wall, to come at an
uncommonly fine apple that had long tempted me with its rosy cheeks, and
I had just succeeded in getting near enough to the prize to grasp it,
when, in making this effort, down I came; and this leg, gentlemen (said
the little man, holding out his deformed limb), was the consequence. I
fell and broke my leg, just as I was about to grasp the apple. Fatal
type of all my subsequent misfortunes!

I have now, gentlemen (went on the little man), to account for the other
deformity that disfigures me, viz.,--my hump-back. This befell me in the
following manner. Playing one day with a number of boys, of about my own
age, which was then six or seven, a big fellow, of double the size
of any of us, came in amongst us, and began to plunder us of our
playthings; and he was in the very act of robbing me of a hoop, when
another lad, still stronger and bigger, who saw the attempted robbery,
generously ran to my assistance, and aimed a tremendous blow with a
stick at my assailant. The blow, however, missed him at whom it was
aimed, and took me exactly on the small of the back, which it broke in
two as if it had been a pipe shank; and the consequence was, as you see,
gentlemen (said the little man in the bright yellow waistcoat, edging
round, at the same time, to indicate his hump).

Well, then, gentlemen (he went on), up to my ninth year, this was
all th